Closing in on the end of this long, long storyline at last. I like this one, especially what with the chubby feet in the last panel. I don't care what you say, those are some amusing feet.

All things considered, Dave is pretty cool about being surrounded by doppelgangers of himself. Dave's surprisingly cool about a lot of things, but I'd be really freaked out by this situation.

Sometimes Artie just talks like me.

Evidentally Helen was right about Artie's usual phenotype reasserting itself. It's convenient how often Helen is right. Well, convenient when she's right about the good things.

I really like that Artie's brain bosses him around and calls him "Shorty." I'm sorry this is the only strip I ever did exploring this concept. I always liked it on "The Simpsons" where Homer's brain would get exasperated with him, or the great bit where Lisa's brain plays soothing music so she can ignore the idiotic things Homer is saying.

I guess I could feel bad about lifting concepts from "The Simpsons," but, as I've said before, all modern comedy is lifted from "The Simpsons."

In other news, it was nice to get back to drawing gerbils after having to draw Artie as Dave for all those weeks.

Another basic plot-advancing strip. The second panel is one of those images that came out perfectly in the thumbnail and then I couldn't get it right in the final drawing. Sometimes it's hard to draw gerbil butts.

Man, Artie's way easier to draw when he's a gerbil. I like that the escape pod appears to have a welcome mat.

The first panel is based on a panel from Issue 1 of Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth, by Jack Kirby. There was no reason for this. I was just really into Kamandi.

Over the course of Narbonic, many people pointed out other animals that my gerbils resemble more than they do actual gerbils. "Tree kangaroo" was a popular suggestion. I think my esteemed Skin Horse collaborator Jeffrey Wells brought it up once or twice. So this strip's for you, smartasses.

36 comments:

Fandarel (fandarel) says:
Dave's had time to adjust to progressive wierdness in his life.

Where, where's the podTo launch us into space?And what smells like cheese??

Artie/Dave has chubby feet!Artie/Dave has chubby feet!(We're laughin' at 'em!)Now it's time to beat retreat!Artie/Dave has chubby feet!

Rockphed (rockphed) says:
I think it is funny how Artie assumes that it happening would be ironic. I suppose if the army were recalled from the middle east to deal with something Artie created and didn't want the army to deal with, then it might be ironic. But, in all practicallity, things you wish for more than situationally can never be ironically brought forth.

Artie's phenotype is apparently very assertive if he transforms back so quickly his clothes get hangtime.

There could have been more slow transformations in Narbonic than just the Helen-to-Dave one. Imagine the comedy gold mine that is a man with a gerbil head walking around, especially combined with characters who have high-level weirdness censors!

John Campbell (jcampbel) says:
Hey, wasn't it three minutes in the last strip?

lincoln douglas (chumpchange) says:
John - you've stumbled across some subtle foreshadowing for Dave Davenport Has Come Unstuck in Time.

Alas, that he be so quickly expelled from the halls of apehood and returned to his lowly status as a rodent. What memories he will have, of hues no rodent should ever spy, of forearm strength no rodent should ever possess, of lips no rodent should ever lock.

Had Artie transfigurated in mid-stride, the sudden and completely silly loss of mass conjoined with his human momentum would have seen him launched right into the wall. Is that right?

For what it was worth, Artie didn't really accomplish too much using Dave's powers. He thoroughly harshed Mell's buzz, radicalised some robots... and that's pretty much the long of it. He didn't even get to ram down a door, trip up a robot platoon or hold someone upside-down by the ankles.

I've been fascinated with The Simpsons's regarding the brain as an organ just as separate from and subservient to our true 'selves' as our stomaches. Where, then, is a place left for 'us'? (It seems, in this episode and the Simpsons episodes, that our self is most closely tied to our mouths - Artie and the Simpsons talk to their brain out loud. 'We' are, apparantly, the person without, defined by our actions rather than our thoughts. This is almost certainly a phenomenon of living in a society where others can only judge us through our actions. Nonetheless, it indicates that our brain has only a tenuous control over our bodies, and our rationality is but a tiny voice behind our eyeballs whom we regularly drown out with our sonorous, droning tongues.)